In early February 2026, online users claimed a low-quality image showing two men shirtless in a bed confirmed Argentine soccer greats Lionel Messi and Sergio Agüero spent time on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's Little St. James island. The rumor spread following the U.S. Department of Justice's release of a new batch of Epstein case files.
For example, on Feb. 2, X user @PeluCavani posted (archived) the image with a Spanish-language caption reading,
(@PeluCavani/X)
In short, the image did not originate from the new batch of the Epstein files, nor did it appear in searches of "Messi" or "Agüero" the files on the Justice Department's website. No evidence suggested the image showed anything more than two teammates posing for a photo. We did not yet confirm the origins of the image, nor did we definitively confirm it was authentic. For these reasons, we've left this claim unrated. We will update this article if we learn more.
Snopes contacted Messi and Agüero via Messi's production firm 525 Rosario and the pair's co-owned company KRÜ Esports, seeking more information about the origins of the image. We also attempted to contact @PeluCavani to ask if the user created the X post as a joke and will update this story if we receive responses.
Digging into the rumor
Reverse image searches with Google Images and TinEye found websites hosting the image as far back as 2017, long before the public availability of near-realistic generative artificial-intelligence tools. For example, an archived page confirmed a user on the now-defunct Argentine social-networking website Taringa published the image as early as Feb. 8, 2017.
Searches for more information found websites including a FIFA.com article reporting, "Sergio Aguero and Lionel Messi have been besties for years." The story documented that, in 2005, Agüero and Messi "bonded rapidly" and roomed together in the Netherlands during the FIFA U-20 World Cup, then known as the FIFA World Youth Championship. The Spain-based Diario AS publication reported (archived) Messi and Agüero continued to room together around matches for many years.
Users also shared a comparison of the alleged photo with an authentic selfie Messi posted (archived) to Instagram in July 2019, showing him holding a drink with Agüero sleeping in a bed in the background.
For further reading, we previously investigated whether a video showed a person drawing Messi and fellow soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo simultaneously using a special method.